Word for the day by Christian Education Forum

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Gleaning Grace: A Call to Welcome the Stranger

Bible Reading:  Leviticus 19:9-10

Key verse:  10 b

"you shall leave them  for the poor and for the sojourner.


DEVOTION

Leviticus 19:9-10 offers a simple but radical command: "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field... Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you." In an agrarian society where survival depended on every stalk of grain, God asked Israel to build margin into their economy—deliberately, not as charity but as justice—for those without land, family, or status.
This is not an afterthought tacked onto worship; it is woven into the fabric of what it means to be God's covenant people. The foreigner is named alongside the poor, reminding Israel that they too were once strangers in Egypt. Memory of displacement was meant to produce mercy, not suspicion.
The Mar Thoma Church, rooted in the ancient St. Thomas Christian tradition of Kerala and shaped by nineteenth-century reformation, has long held together liturgical depth with a strong evangelical and social conscience. Its history—of migration within India and across the globe, of communities rebuilding life in new lands—gives this text particular resonance. Many Mar Thoma families know firsthand what it means to arrive somewhere unfamiliar, dependent on the goodwill of others.
Today, as millions are displaced by war, poverty, and climate disaster, Leviticus 19:9-10 challenges the Church to leave "edges" in our own lives—time, resources, hospitality—for migrants and refugees among us. True faith is not measured only in worship, but in how deliberately we make room at the edges of our harvest for the stranger in our midst.
As a successful migrant community on this land of opportunities, we MarThomites owe any feasible help to our neighbors and the marginalized within our community.

PRAYER

Generous God, who commanded us to leave the edges of our harvest for the stranger and the poor, open our hands and our hearts to welcome the migrant and the refugee as You have welcomed us. Give your Church, in the spirit of Christ who had no place to lay His head, the courage to make room at the edges of our lives for those who have none. Amen.
 

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"A harvest is never truly complete until its edges have been left for someone else. In leaving room for the stranger, we discover that generosity was never a loss — it was always an invitation to reflect the heart of God."

Eapen Daniel
Sabha Council member
Christos Mar Thoma Church Philadelphia

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